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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
4951
« on: December 05, 2012, 11:10 »
The controlled vocabulary may once have been the right way to go about keywording images, but I think it's outdated and inflexible.
Google does a fine job of finding lots of stuff and refining searches and does it without using a static CV. As long as the search engine is smart enough and contributors don't spam (which they can do with or without a CV, and I think stricter inspections are the only solution to that) you can type something approximating a sentence describing what you want and get useful results.
However, if you want to sell at iStock you have to deal with the CV - just as you have to deal with the foibles of all the sites. DT doesn't do phrases, which is ridiculous. Several of the sites have no spell check, which they all should have.
As far as the approach of being pretty literal with keywording, I think iStock has it close to right - putting sandwich on an uncut isolated loaf of bread just because it could be made into a sandwich is spam. Not as bad as putting "sexy woman" but still totally unhelpful to buyers.
4952
« on: December 05, 2012, 11:00 »
So today's gem is a sale of a small size - 758 x 505 pixels - royalty free (i.e. not Novel Use) for $7.83 - of which my 60% is $4.70. Not a horrible return for a regular license (i.e. not EL) but the "list" price on that size is $95! They're selling it at a 92% discount...
OUCH!
Was that sold through the UK newspaper scheme? (that will show in the details).
I don't see anything referencing a UK newspaper scheme on the page "Summary of Items Sold". I find the maze of reports of what I've earned and which page has what detail very, very disorienting - so perhaps that's in some other report?
4953
« on: December 05, 2012, 00:48 »
So today's gem is a sale of a small size - 758 x 505 pixels - royalty free (i.e. not Novel Use) for $7.83 - of which my 60% is $4.70. Not a horrible return for a regular license (i.e. not EL) but the "list" price on that size is $95! They're selling it at a 92% discount...
It beats the 31 cent royalty from Pocketstock, but that's really damning with faint praise.
4954
« on: December 04, 2012, 21:45 »
Not a big issue, but I don't use it and don't much care about it one way or the other
4955
« on: December 04, 2012, 16:37 »
I decided to contact contributor relations. They may never answer, and if they do it may be content free, but I figured I'd amuse myself and see what turns up  I'll post if I get anything back.
4956
« on: December 04, 2012, 16:36 »
Google translate says that's Dutch and that it means "Once you can bring your point across in perfect Dutch you can catch me on my misuse of the English language. Old sourpuss, get good back and forth." Close enough? Gostwyck's dry sense of humor sometimes gets a little wetter with a few beers and he can find us annoying Try being rude about SS at a time of day when it's late evening in Europe and you might, as I once did, get a point blank blast from both barrels!
4957
« on: December 04, 2012, 16:31 »
LCV - low commercial value, everyone's favorite rejection reason
4958
« on: December 04, 2012, 16:20 »
Thank you for posting that. I can see that Jon's had some media training - many questions he didn't really answer (not that I expected him to) without saying he wouldn't answer (with that one exception that I assume had to do withe the quiet period).
4959
« on: December 04, 2012, 13:07 »
Deleted. I'm making a new topic for this
4960
« on: December 04, 2012, 12:52 »
There's a careful tinkering to find the sweet spot where you're maximizing monthly revenue. 0
But that spot isn't the same for all images. Some will make a zillion sales at a low price. Others would make only a few sales, but buyers would pay a lot more to get what they need. These dumb one-size-fits-all pricing plans are a big reason microstock is ceasing to work. You can't possibly make money on niche market material, unless it costs you practically nothing to produce....
Reasonable point. And before Getty effed it up by jacking up the prices (and secondarily the editors playing favorites and putting in work from their buddies regardless of whether it fit), the Vetta collection at iStock was designed to be something like this. Images that were oddball, costly to produce or in other ways niche could be encouraged by providing a higher price point. However, DT hasn't done anything of the sort. There's the same content, no "edited" collections and a pricing scheme that is not producing more money for contributors
4961
« on: December 04, 2012, 12:15 »
I see lots of complaints of DT being a low earner and the desire of punishing them for it. However, from what I can tell the RPD at DT is generally much higher than at most other mid and top tier sites. Sure, sales are greater at SS, but the RPD is generally MUCH lower. It seems to me that DT is compensating us more than some of these other sites, but they just aren't getting enough buyers. Why aren't we trying to bring more people to DT to increase sales rather than trying to punish them?
I started with DT in 2004. My Best Month Ever there was November 2006 when the RPD was about half what it was Nov 2012 and I made slightly less in Nov 212. I'd rather have the higher monthly return than the feel good factor of a higher RPD. People seem to forget that if you make the images more expensive, fewer people buy them. There's a careful tinkering to find the sweet spot where you're maximizing monthly revenue. DT has failed to grow as an agency over time and continues to bump along at the bottom of the top tier. Trumpeting an improved RPD doesn't make up for that
4962
« on: December 03, 2012, 14:38 »
I'm getting closer to having my whole portfolio at Thinkstock/photos.com, but not there yet. And no, I don't think there is anything you can do to speed things up. They run the "connector" some weekends - I had about 400 move over a week or so ago after several weeks of no activity - with no clear pattern I can see. The same thing appears to happen for the exclusives who are waiting for their E+ files to move to Getty Images. Slow and intermittent progress.
4963
« on: December 03, 2012, 14:36 »
For whatever reason I only received my payment once this morning.
But I would suggest that those who did get double let iStock sort it out - why risk any fees (currency conversion or other) because they effed up? They make zero effort to have timely fixes when the money is missing from our accounts, so from my perspective, their "goodwill" has a negative balance, and I'd have no inclination to make extra effort on their behalf to return their money. Perhaps it'd be better for them just to subtract it from the next payment due and skip the refund altogether.
Each Monday morning, they pay me a week in arrears, so getting paid (if I had in fact received a double dose) once in arrears and once "on time" wouldn't seem that unreasonable. Then they could sort out the overage in the future.
And if they don't trust us, well, what goes around comes around, as they say.
4964
« on: December 03, 2012, 11:37 »
I've asked Leaf to move this part of the thread to a new topic
4965
« on: December 03, 2012, 11:36 »
As Serban would say, "A sale is a sale."
In which case he can take the $8.57 and I'll have the $25.71
4966
« on: December 03, 2012, 10:59 »
I sold a P-EL this morning on DT - 50 credits, level 0 image (25% royalty) and I netted $8.57. These were apparently heavily discounted credits - 68.5 cents - but even so, this brings home how much less DT is paying us than they used to.
Buyer pays $34.28, DT keeps $25.71 and passes on $8.57 to me. Back when credits were a flat $1 and we received 50%, DT would have paid me $25 and kept $25. The buyer gets a deal, DT's take is unchanged and the contributor gets the short end of the stick.
Pretty general description of how contributors are treated by microstock agencies at the moment. Depressing.
4967
« on: December 03, 2012, 01:30 »
I happened upon this write up from some Getty IT employees when I was looking for something else. Can't say I'm surprised to hear some negative comments. Interesting to hear that they're outsourcing some software work to South America - stretching the communications lines like that can be pretty tricky
4968
« on: December 03, 2012, 00:44 »
I just received the 20% off any credit pack e-mail - coming to my contributor account, and nothing to the test account that received the 30% off agency e-mail.
4969
« on: December 02, 2012, 20:05 »
I don't have that, but I do have one from last week saying Agency files were 30% off - is 45 to 175 credits less than they were before? I've lost track (and that doesn't really affect me).
I didn't get that one.
Have you been a buyer in the past? I've only ever bought two files, so I guess they probably guessed I wouldn't be in the Agency target market.
I've never been a buyer. Ages ago I created a test account when there was some bug that I was gathering data on. That test account has never uploaded or downloaded, but I still keep it around to see what e-mails it receives.
4970
« on: December 02, 2012, 19:45 »
I don't have that, but I do have one from last week saying Agency files were 30% off - is 45 to 175 credits less than they were before? I've lost track (and that doesn't really affect me).
However, the pricing is now really odd - the same image is much, much cheaper on iStock than it is on Getty. See a Rubberball image on iStock (number 14628342) from $79 to $255 and on Getty Images, (number 104302741) from $25 to $600 (the size closest to the $79 version at iStock is $205 on Getty).
$255 vs. $600 is a huge difference...
4971
« on: December 02, 2012, 17:23 »
A place that was in the news; a story about that topic that got a lot of coverage...could be random but probably it's just that you hadn't realized the temporary significance of your image. It'd be really great if we knew more about where the images are used.
4972
« on: December 01, 2012, 17:50 »
...Do you think that the traction you're experiencing is simply related to your transition? Lisafx is not reporting great growth in the face a great uploads, but you are. I suspect that you're excellent work is starting to filter through all of the unknowns and gaining steam. Happy for you.
I think that Lisa has always done so much better than me - particularly at iStock - that she has a lot more to lose. She is also at FT which has apparently hammered Emeralds of late. Her portfolio is much larger and the appeal of her hunky husband and several of the older couples she shoots is huge. My portfolio is much more of a niche, and these days it's what I feel like doing (perhaps if sales keep growing I'll consider returning to consciously trying to be more commercial). I used to describe myself (while exclusive) as part of the iStock middle class. I wasn't in the stratosphere with Sean, Lise Gagne, Abu, Amanda Rhodes, etc. but I have done better than the huge pool of contributors who never really get a decent size portfolio going. In other words, it's much easier for me to do better in income than it is for Lisa, just as a startup can increase its revenue by 50% more easily than Apple can And thanks for the compliment on my work...
4973
« on: December 01, 2012, 14:50 »
Congrats JoAnn, very encouraging.
But, I'm not. My month that started strongly faded.
BS and DT were up -- especially DT -- but SS let me down.
Nearly 3 months of anticipation and Can Stock still hasn't sold an image for me. 
Your photos are probably overqualified for CanStockPhoto. Submit crapstock and your sales will fly 
Ha! As I can make sense of it, it appears that illustrators do best at CanStock. I really like Duncan and what he's done over the years, but it's a shame they can't be at the top of the middle tier. And thanks for the congratulations. I think my conclusion is that, for me anyway, leaving exclusivity was a good move. When I look at the November stats thread on IS, it's painful to read. That could have been me...
4974
« on: December 01, 2012, 13:49 »
What a wonderful month!
I may be just shy of an overall BME - won't know until I see the PP numbers later in the month. As the iStock PP is now the third highest earner (after SS and IS) it can make a difference. My BME was November 2010 as an IS exclusive and even if I'm shy, it won't be much.
November was up 20% over Oct 2012 (which was up 22% over Sept) and up 55% over Nov 2011
SS had a BME (by 10% over Oct 2012) and was up 32% over Nov 2011. This was in spite of relatively fewer ELs than October, but very strong on demand sales. Downloads were up 27% over Nov 2011 - what that says is that even though revenue per download is increasing, so are downloads. So far anyway, they're avoiding the trap IS fell into - increasing prices so much you lose buyers and have to offset that with ever increasing prices.
IS could never be a BME after having been exclusive, but it was at least up 15% from Oct 2012 (which was up from the month before, but it had fallen so far into the toilet that this was just climbing out a bit more) and up 17% from Nov 2011
DT had a best month since I returned in June 2011, but not a BME - that was still in Nov 2006! RPD then was about half what it was Nov 2012 but there was more total money (and I think on a smaller portfolio, but I don't keep track of that number; I think it was certainly a less salable portfolio then). DT was up 20% over Oct 2012 and Nov 2011
123rf had a BME, up 29% from Oct 2012 - and I haven't uploaded there since they announced their wretched RC scheme
CanStock had a BME, up 156% from Oct 2012, largely because of better distribution DLs and one EL
BigStock had a best month since returning June 2011, up 31% over Oct 2012 with DLs doubling (but way, way short of the earlier sales levels they had; this was 1/5 of the BME in Nov 2007)
Veer was up 49% over Oct 2012, PhotoDune was up 57% over Oct 2012 on regular sales, plus I had a photo in the holiday bundle which added a nice bonus (it didn't sell as well as they'd predicted though, so it was a little disappointing).
Stockfresh might as well shut up shop - $2.50 on 2 sales for the whole month. They should sell their code to people who want to build a stock site as I can't see any other use for them. Pocketstock sold one image for a grand total of 31 cents royalty to me! Don't think they're going to rescue us from the greedy agencies :J) WarmPicture had a good month, although it's still progressing slowly - percentages don't really matter much when things are sporadic.
Alamy managed to be about equivalent to 123rf with just one big sale and 3 novel use.
4975
« on: November 30, 2012, 20:53 »
perhaps I didn't explain it clearly:
LR, like ACR, is non-destructive editing. So whilst changes you make show up on screen they aren't applied until you press the go button (in ACR it's called Image Processor). I appreciate that you can't upload RAW files, but if the OP was starting with jpegs there's a chance he didn't process the changes and sent them thru SOOC.
When you export from LR, if you shot JPEGs, any adjustments of any kind you made in LR to the JPEGs would be included in the exported file - you can't export the unchanged image by mistake. There's no "go" button for applying any adjustments as they're auto applied, if that makes sense.
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